Animal Crossing on Wii

Thursday 18 May 2006In the Wii version of Animal Crossing - currently in development at Nintendo - you'll swing your arms around to chop trees, make digging motions to dig up fossils and hold the Wii-mote just like a fishing rod in order to catch fish, according to series creator and Nintendo designer, Katsuya Eguchi.

The next-gen version of Animal Crossing will also link up with WiiConnect24 - an always-online system which remains active even if you're not playing on your Wii console.

With WiiConnect24 people on your friends list can visit your Animal Crossing house while you sleep, and leave you gifts or letters. A friend code system will be used - much like in the DS game, Wild World - so, thankfully, you're unlikely to return to find a horse's head or stalker's notes on your carpet.

Above: KK Slider, Animal Crossing's most popular character, will almost certainly make a Wii appearance

Nintendo has not officially announced Animal Crossing for Wii yet, although it was used as an example for WiiConnect24 during last week's pre-E3 Nintendo conference. But Katsuya Eguchi is obviously working hard on matching the fantasy world of Animal Crossing with the real-world movements possible with Wii's controllers, and we can't wait to see how it's all going to turn out.